Following Yuval Noah Harari, we interpret the acronym AI not as Artificial Intelligence but as Alien Intelligence. AI is alien to us and different from our intelligence. It can explore areas in many domains that our intelligence does not lead us into. This comes with not only opportunities but also great danger. Here we want to better understand the nature of AI and the benefits and threat AI poses to human society and the way we are. We want to reach out to society and communicate the thoughts we have so that there is sufficient precaution in letting AI take over many of the tasks we deem necessary to maintain our increasingly complex society.
Kant defined the Enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity, the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.” Before Enlightenment, humans looked to God for answers and religion for advice! Are we now heading into the post-Enlightenment, where we are looking to AI for answers and advice? Where those behind AI will have God-like power over us and give us their new religion to believe in?
If you have serious thoughts about the nature, potential and threats of AI, please join this VCC and participate in our deliberations, research, and outreach.
[Nov 04, 2025] AI Survey: A short survey on perceptions of Artificial Intelligence is open for students and faculty. Go to the Survey or use the QR code.
[May 04, 2025] Read the AI Beacon: The AI Beacon reports regularly on news concerning the developments, uses, challenges, and dangers of what we should call Alien Intelligence.
[Jun 04, 2026] ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: This is what the Global Justice Report published today makes very clear. Read the article by Jonathan Watts in the Guardian as an introduction. While this equal and habitable world is still possible, it is very unlikely that we will transition to this world as long as greedy and unethical billionaires supported by governments they own compete to be the first trillionaire. The report underlines that the fight for an equal and habitable world has to be a fight against a system that rewards extraction and depletion of all resources and requires infinitely growing consumption devouring the Earth's life-support system; a system designed to increase inequality and sustain the exploitation of almost all to serve the greed of a few!
